With all due respect, I have to firmly disagree with almost everything you say in this article. I wrote up my own thoughts on it, as someone who has rented, purchased, and rented out properties, which you can read here.

First, as a caveat, I agree that individual circumstances vary, and that there are some cases where buying a home is a bad move. These include:

• You can’t afford a 20% down-payment
• Your income is not stable enough or high enough to afford the monthly mortgage payment
• You’re not likely to stay in one place for more than 5 years
• Your credit score is so low that you can’t get a mortgage with a reasonable interest rate
• You’re living in a market where home prices have appreciated much faster than rents have increased

However, for almost all other cases, buying is far superior to renting. It’s not that your analysis is wrong about how slowly you pay down your mortgage principal or all the other expenses that come along with owning your home.

That’s not what you’re missing.

What you’re missing is that if you rent, your landlady is not renting you that property out of the goodness of her heart. She’s doing it as a business proposition.

This means that unless she’s inept at that business (not a good bet), she’s calculated all her costs including mortgage interest, property taxes, maintenance, insurance, etc. plus the cashflow requirement of paying down the principal of her mortgage. Then, she tacked on another 10–20%, and that’s what you’re paying for with your rent.

As the renter you’re already paying for all those extra costs for your landlord through your rent.

The freedom and flexibility you mention are there (at least once your lease is up), but that comes at a significant financial cost, which the landlady can increase each time you renew your lease (as opposed to the complete predictability of mortgage payments for a fixed-rate loan).